@Peter Hume: And what is the balance between?

Between various uses of the forest. Some put value on wood products, some on grazing area, some on cropping, commercial exploitation, some as water catchment areas, some for hunting, some for exploring nature, some as simply preserving habitat - and probably a whole pile of other uses as well.

Some of these uses conflict, some are complementary. It is not a simple picture, and it can't be made in isolation either. What is done with neighbouring areas effects what can be done with this one.

@Peter Hume: How do you propose to get the balance right?

The usual way a democracy does it.

@MWPOYNTER: If you go back to my post you will see I didn't say...

Oh. I didn't read it that way. Fair enough.

@MWPOYNTER: Despite your view to the contrary, critics of the timber industry have never accepted that they know less about logging than those who actually undertake it.

I don't have a view to the contrary.

rtuart
You haven't given any reason why the balance between different competing values or uses should be decided by compulsory process based on deal-making between political parties pork-barrelling in marginal electorates, rather than by voluntary process.

What reason is there to think that the relevant governmental decision-maker is going to know:
a) how different people value the particular resource in issue relative to other possible uses
b) what the balance should be, and why; and
c) how is the exclusion of one person's use, in favour of another's, to be justified relative to those relative values?

But if the presumption is available that the politically appointed decision-maker has such knowledge, then why shouldn't it be generally available, for example, with internet censorship, or cooking dinner, or anything?

By what criterion would the decision-making power be limited?

@Peter Hume: You haven't given any reason why the balance between different competing values or uses should be decided by compulsory process based on deal-making between political parties pork-barrelling in marginal electorates, rather than by voluntary process.

I don't need to Peter. If all parties involved can come to some agreement and dump it on the pollies plate as a done deal then I am sure he would gleefully accept it, and then go out and pronounce "what a good pollie am I for finding such a consensus". So if what you are suggesting should happen is possible, I am sure it would have already happened. The issue is of course this is a zero sum game - you can not convert land to framing and still log it, for instance, so such a consensus is unlikely.

Otherwise - I don't know of a political process that works as well as the one we western societies have developed, which is why I suggested we follow it. Regardless of our differences, I doubt most others here would disagree. It is ugly, it is slow, and possibly inefficient but historically it has worked very well for us.

If you believe they is another method out there you think has worked demonstratively better in practice, I look forward to hearing about it. We have discussed this a few times now, and while I know you have a lot of ideas on how things could be done better I don't recall you pointing out any examples of substantially different society of our size where they have produced better long term outcomes.

RStuart says "National Parks provide habitat for our wildlife. They don't need to "managed" to do this, certainly not in the way the Forestry Industry would be managing them.As the country with the highest mammal extinction rate on the planet, our wildlife needs all the help it can get."

Correct me if I am wrong but I read he/she is implying that areas managed by foresters for multiple use do not protect wildlife and that Australia'a mammalian extinction is due to forestry. Yet, only one of those 17 mammals lived in a forest - the tassie tiger - and forestry never caused it to become extinct. So unless rstuart has evidence to rewrite history, I would like to know where his/her evidence is for link between forestry and mammalian extinctions? Lindenmayer tried this trick in an article and I had a field day with him.

Also he claims the IPA is primarily funded by Gunns. This is the first I have heard of this - any real evidence apart from a newspaper claim or TWS hysterics.

@tragedy: Correct me if I am wrong but I read he/she is implying that areas managed by foresters for multiple use do not protect wildlife and that Australia'a mammalian extinction is due to forestry.

Consider yourself corrected then. What I wrote is what I meant - and nothing more.

@tragedy: Also he claims the IPA is primarily funded by Gunns.

He was wrong. He quoted from memory, and he should have taken the time to look it up. The word "primarily" should not have been there.

So rstuart, how much does Gunns donate to the IPA, if it is not "primarily" ?